The Barbara Walton Playwrights' Arena

Darreonna Davis

Darreonna Davis is a senior journalism major and playwriting minor at Howard University. A New Orleans, Louisiana, native, Davis is a multimedia storyteller who is passionate about Black culture and history and seeks to tell both fiction and non-fiction stories that document Black life—past and present.

Caitlin Frazier

Caitlin Frazier is an English major and Theater and Performance Studies minor at Georgetown University, graduating in May 2023. A performer at heart (most recently Joanne in nomadictheatre's RENT and Flick in Mask and Bauble's Violet), Caitlin started her writing journey during her time spent at home over COVID. Writing allowed her to find deeper parts of herself, and it has been full steam ahead ever since. In the summer of 2021, she attended the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive. During her time at Georgetown, she has been an active member of nomadictheatre (Associate Producer), Mask and Bauble Dramatic Society, and Black Movements Dance Theater. She is excited to hopefully continue writing and acting post-graduation.

Nick Giotis

Nick Giotis is a senior a Georgetown University from Darien, CT. His first full length play: Grand Courses, was staged at Georgetown as the runner-up in the 36th annual Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival (DBMOAF). His second play, Melpomene, By Another Name, the winning play at this year’s DBMOAF, will be headlining the festival this February. Nick fell in love with playwriting his senior year of high school when his short play Afterparty was the only one rejected from his high school playwriting competition. He hasn’t stopped writing since.

Colum Goebelbecker

Colum Goebelbecker believes in the transformative power of the arts to humanize complex global issues and cultivate empathy across difference. As a DC-based actor, singer, dancer, musical theater performer, teaching artist, and playwright-in-training with Arena Stage, he strives to channel that belief into all of his work. You can see Colum as Edvard in Rorschach Theater’s upcoming production of Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the sea at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. He recently played Ichabod in Ichabod: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, an original musical at Creative Cauldron last October. Over the summer, he played Marco in Higher for the Capital Fringe Festival and Trinculo in The Tempest for GrassrootsShakespeare DC. Last March, he made it to the Final Four in Monologue Madness DC, an acting competition of over 200 actors.

Colum graduated from Georgetown with a government degree and theater minor in December of 2021, and he’s since found a home for his passion for theater for social change at the Lab for Performance and Politics. He works as a Project Associate for their award-winning In Your Shoes Program, a theatrical project that brings together intergenerational participants to engage in dialogue about critical issues such as race, political polarization, memory, and identity. He currently administers and co-teaches an In Your Shoes project in collaboration with Georgetown's Center for US-China Dialogue. 

Colum also works as a bilingual teaching artist for Imagination State’s Óyeme Program. He teaches Latinx immigrant freshman and sophomores at Theodore Roosevelt High School basic theater skills with the goal of trauma-informed healing.

Nirlash Karki

Nirlash Karki is a graduating senior at Howard University from Birendranagar, Nepal. A Film/TV Production major, with a minor in Playwriting, Nirlash is a passionate writer and director with a keen interest in producing formally daring and culturally resonant works across various storytelling media. He was also part of the Howard Entertainment Program, a pipeline program dedicated to bridging the gap between students of color and decision-making positions in the entertainment industry. Nirlash’s creative output focuses on contextualizing identities along the lines of gender, race, sexual orientation, and class while rigorously engaging with the history of theatrical and cinematic mediums through both narrative and formal means.

Trevonae Williams

Trevonae Williams is a senior journalism major and playwriting minor at Howard University, hailing from the island of Jamaica. As a multi-hyphenate artist, her primary goal is to create connection and community through authentic storytelling.